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Earth Systems Engineering And Management
Earth systems engineering and management (ESEM) is a discipline used to analyze, design, engineer and manage complex environmental systems. It entails a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, engineering, environmental science, ethics and philosophy. At its core, ESEM looks to "rationally design and manage coupled human–natural systems in a highly integrated and ethical fashion".Gorman, Michael. (2004). ''Syllabus Spring Semester 2004''. Retrieved October 29, 2005 from http://repo-nt.tcc.virginia.edu/classes/ESEM/syllabus.html . ESEM is a newly emerging area of study that has taken root at the University of Virginia, Cornell and other universities throughout the United States, and at the Centre for Earth Systems Engineering Research (CESER) at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. Founders of the discipline are Braden Allenby and Michael Gorman. Introduction to ESEM For centuries, humans have utilized the earth and its natural resources to advance civiliza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Braden Allenby
Braden R. Allenby (born 1950) is an American environmental scientist, environmental attorney and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Law, at Arizona State University. Biography Allenby was born in Highland Park, Illinois on December 29, 1950, to Dr. Richard J. Allenby, Jr.(1923-2017) and Julia T. Allenby(1925–2002). He is the oldest of three brothers, Dr. Kent Allenby(1952-) and Peter Allenby(1957-). Allenby graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1972, received his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia Law School in 1978, his Master's in Economics from the University of Virginia in 1979, his Master's in Environmental Sciences from Rutgers University in the Spring of 1989, and his Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from Rutgers in 1992. He joined AT&T in 1983 as a telecommunications regulatory attorney, and was an environmental attorney and Senior Environmental Attorney for AT&T from 1984 to 1993. From 1991 to 1992 he was the J. Herbert Hollo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Environment
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses the interaction of all living species, climate, weather and natural resources that affect human survival and economic activity. The concept of the ''natural environment'' can be distinguished as components: * Complete ecological units that function as natural systems without massive civilized human intervention, including all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, atmosphere, and natural phenomena that occur within their boundaries and their nature. * Universal natural resources and physical phenomena that lack clear-cut boundaries, such as air, water, and climate, as well as energy, radiation, electric charge, and magnetism, not originating from civilized human actions. In contrast to the natural environment is the built e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carbon Cycle
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth. Carbon is the main component of biological compounds as well as a major component of many minerals such as limestone. Along with the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle, the carbon cycle comprises a sequence of events that are key to make Earth capable of sustaining life. It describes the movement of carbon as it is recycled and reused throughout the biosphere, as well as long-term processes of carbon sequestration to and release from carbon sinks. Carbon sinks in the land and the ocean each currently take up about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon emissions each year. Humans have disturbed the biological carbon cycle for many centuries by modifying land use, and moreover with the recent industrial-scale mining of fossil carbon ( coal, petroleum and gas extraction, and cement manufacture) from the geosphere. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Engineering
Environmental engineering is a professional engineering discipline that encompasses broad scientific topics like chemistry, biology, ecology, geology, hydraulics, hydrology, microbiology, and mathematics to create solutions that will protect and also improve the health of living organisms and improve the quality of the environment. Environmental engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering and chemical engineering. While on the part of civil engineering, the Environmental Engineering is focused mainly on Sanitary Engineering. Environmental engineering is the application of scientific and engineering principles to improve and maintain the environment to: * protect human health, *protect nature's beneficial ecosystems, *and improve environmental-related enhancement of the quality of human life. Environmental engineers devise solutions for wastewater management, water and air pollution control, recycling, waste disposal, and public health. They design municipal water s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systems Engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge. The individual outcome of such efforts, an engineered system, can be defined as a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function. Issues such as requirements engineering, reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams, testing and evaluation, maintainability and many other disciplines necessary for successful system design, development, implementation, and ultimate decommission become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as industrial engineeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable living). Sustainability is commonly described as having three dimensions (also called pillars): environmental, economic, and social. Many publications state that the environmental dimension (also called " planetary integrity" or "ecological integrity") is the most important, and, in everyday usage, "sustainability" is often focused on countering major environmental problems, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several " planetary boundaries". A closely related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used synonymously. However, UNESCO distinguishes the two thus: "''Sustainability'' is often thought of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into products and services which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences. Industrial ecology has been defined as a "systems-based, multidisciplinary discourse that seeks to understand emergent behavior of complex integrate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Management
Environmental resource management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aims to ensure that ecosystem services are protected and maintained for future human generations, and also maintain ecosystem integrity through considering ethical, economic, and scientific ( ecological) variables. Environmental resource management tries to identify factors affected by conflicts that rise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to environmental protection, sustainability, integrated landscape management, natural resource management, fisheries management, forest management, and wildlife management, and others. Significance Environmental resource management is an issue of increasing concern, as reflected in its prevalence in several texts influencing global sociopolitical frameworks such as the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Review
A design review is a milestone within a product development process whereby a design is evaluated against its requirements in order to verify the outcomes of previous activities and identify issues before committing to—and, if need be, to re-prioritise—further work. The ultimate design review, if successful, therefore triggers the product launch or product release. The conduct of design reviews is compulsory as part of design controls, when developing products in certain regulated contexts such as medical devices. By definition, a review must include persons who are external to the design team. Contents of a design review In order to evaluate a design against its requirements, a number of means may be considered, such as: *Physical tests. *Engineering simulations. *Examinations (Walk-through). Timing of design reviews Most formalised systems engineering processes recognise that the cost of correcting a fault increases as it progresses through the development process. Add ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saw Grass
''Cladium'' (fen-sedge, sawgrass or twig-sedge) is a genus of large sedges, with a nearly worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate regions. These are plants characterized by long, narrow (grass-like) leaves having sharp, often serrated (sawtooth-like) margins, and flowering stems 1–3 m tall bearing a much-branched inflorescence. Like many plants found in wet habitats, it has deeply buried rhizomes that can produce tall shoots with dense canopies. ''Cladium mariscus ''subsp.'' jamaicense'', or saw-grass, is common in marshes and savannas throughout the tropical Americas. One typical and well-known area of extensive saw-grass growth is the Florida Everglades; sawgrass is the plant referred to by the descriptor, "River of Grass". Like many species of the Everglades, ''C. jamaicense'' grows in extremely infertile conditions, particularly wet sites that are low in phosphorus. Dense sawgrass beds are intermingled with other vegetation types. Together they produce a rich arr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florida Everglades
The Everglades is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river wide and over long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades experiences a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Throughout the 20th century, the Everglades suffered significant loss of habitat and environmental degradation. Human habitation in the southern portion of the Florida peninsula dates to 15,000 years ago. Before European colonization, the region was dominated by the native Calusa and Tequesta tribes. With Spanish colonization, both tribes declined gradually d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recycling
Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. The Energy recycling, recovery of energy from waste materials is often included in this concept. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the properties it had in its original state. It is an alternative to "conventional" waste disposal that can save material and help lower greenhouse gas emissions. It can also prevent the waste of potentially useful materials and reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reducing energy use, air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling). Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the "Waste minimisation, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle" waste hierarchy. It promotes environmental sustainability by removing raw material input and redirecting waste output in the economic system. There are some International Organization for Standardization, ISO standards related t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
